Page 19 of Offside

“I just wanted you to admit it out loud so you’d stop carrying it around like a secret you’re keeping from yourself. Let me remind you, I know about your almost kiss with him back in college. You told me all about it.” Paige topped off both glasses, sat back down, and grinned. “You like him.”

“I work with him.”

“Both things can be true.”

“Griffin would lose his mind.”

“Also true. But that’s a problem for future Maren.” Paige settled back. “What happened at Sunday dinner? Because Griffin mentioned you two did the dishes and then didn’t say anything else.”

My expression shifted. “Griffin needs to learn to keep his mouth shut.”

“Griffin is my greatest resource and I protect him accordingly.” Paige leaned in. “Dishes, Maren.”

“We did the dishes. It was my turn and he insisted on helping. Griffin disappeared to the garage, we washed and dried and talked, and then the coffee maker beeped and I reached past him to turn it to keep-warm and the kitchen is not that big and for two seconds—” I stopped.

Paige went very still and with wide eyes, stopped raising her glass to her lips and waited, unblinking.

“Nothing happened,” I said. “Griffin called from the garage and it was—nothing happened.”

“But.”

“But it almost did.” I said it quietly. “I think. I’m pretty sure. It was a moment. That’s all.”

“Does he know you think that?”

I stared into my glass. “He was there.”

Paige made a sound that was not a word but was also a complete sentence.

“He’s Griffin’s best friend,” I said. “And I work with him. I will have my hands on his shoulder every week for the foreseeable future and—” I pointed at Paige. “I am a professional. I am handling this.”

“You are handling this,” Paige agreed, in a tone that meant she believed that approximately forty percent.

“I am.”

“Okay.”

“I am, Paige.”

“I said okay.” She smiled into her wine. “Monday should be very interesting.”

Monday came. He was there at eight and he’d done the exercises. I could tell before I even touched him, from the way he held the shoulder, the tension pattern was different, looser. I worked it for thirty minutes and he asked two questions, pointed and measured, and I answered them and kept my hands on the job and my thoughts somewhere clinical, and I mostly succeeded. We hadn’t small-talked, in fact, we’d barely talked which wasn’t as awkward as I’d have expected. I worked in companionable silence.

Mostly.

I was finishing my notes when a knock came at my open door. Not Griffin’s knock. Griffin didn’t knock, he materialized.

Sawyer Shaw stood in the frame in a dress shirt with his sleeves rolled, a man who looked like he’d come from three meetings, had three more to get to, and had stopped anyway because it was on his to-do list.

“Got a minute?”

“Of course.” I set my pen down.

He came in but didn’t sit, standing with his hands in his pockets taking in the treatment suite the same way I’d taken it in myself on the first day. He was assessing, noting, measuring it against whatever he’d imagined when they’d built it. “How’s it working for you? The setup.”

“Better than I could have imagined,” I said brightly. “The equipment inventory took three days but everything we asked for is here.”

He nodded and his expression settled. “We wanted it right the first time.” He glanced at the treatment table, the supply wall, the protocol binders I’d filled with three weeks of notes. “You’ve been hitting the ground running.”